


Mr. Spence

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Exile, Gen, Holmes Brothers, Spies & Secret Agents, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No idea where this came from. None. Nada. It just--came.</p><p>I'm reluctant to give a synopsis, as I think this one works best if it unfolds itself as you read. I'll just say that it's a brothers story, and a story about the cost of being the British Government, and perhaps about something that is both the same and yet somehow different about the two men. </p><p>See what you think. Hell, tell me what you think: this one really caught me off guard, and I'm curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. Spence

“Morning, Mr. Spence. Here’s your cuppa,” the young barista said, handing a large paper cup of tea with a lid to the tall man in the worn olive-green paddock coat and brown fedora.

“Good morning, Nev,” the gentleman said in return. He dropped the Daily Mail on the counter, and fished in his pocket for his wallet, passing over a twenty-pound note and taking back change. “Fine day, isn’t it?”

“Lovely, sir,” Nev agreed. “Couldn’t ask for nicer. Not at this time of year, anyway.”

“No, not at this time of year,” Mr. Spence agreed, and gathered his paper and his tea. Once out of the coffee shop he headed down the town’s high street and cut down a side street, where he accepted a small payment from his bookie and placed a new bet, referring studiously to the Daily Mail’s racing page before doing so.

“Only ten pun’?” the bookie asked, mournfully. “How’s a man to make back his losses when you only put down ten pun’, Mr. Spence?”

Mr. Spence quirked a mild smile, and shrugged. “Not so sure about this one, Andy. Just not so sure…”

“That’s why they call it ‘betting’, isn’t it?” the bookie pointed out. “Sure you don’t want to chance a twenny?”

“Certain,” Mr. Spence said, then asked, pleasantly, “What did you think of this weekend’s Doctor, eh? Holding up well, that Capaldi, don’t you think?”

“Liked Smith better, me,” the bookie said, “But, eh—it wasn’t half-bad. Not half, it wasn’t. Had me kiddies behind the sofa, that’s certain. ‘Ex-ter-mi-nate!’” He laughed, and said, “How’s business, then?”

“Bit slow,” Mr. Spence said. “Working on a project for an author. Web page. Have a few more assignments coming in.”

“Must be nice, work from home and all that,” the bookie said.

“It’s better than a cubicle,” Mr. Spence said. “I can have my bit of a garden, go for walks with Archie.”

“Nice dogs, Scotties,” the bookie said.

“Not Archie,” Mr. Spence said, with a wicked smile. “Archie’s a right bastard. But he’s my right bastard.”

He left, then, pacing quietly down the old, cobbled streets of the northern town. He was an ordinary looking man with a plain face: small, mischievous eyes, a wide, thin-lipped mouth, a long nose. He was tall, somewhat lanky, in passable shape for his apparent age, but nothing to write home about. A million men like him attended single-parent clubs and drank their pints around England on any given day. He dressed modestly, in dark wool trousers, classic knit fishermen’s jumpers, and simple cotton shirts, without ties. He wore comfortable broken-in walking shoes, and his coat and hat, while whispering of a dashing yen for the romantic, drew a proper and modest line at anything too dramatic. He drove a far from new but nicely maintained Mercedes-Benz W204, in dull silver. He lived in a cottage just outside town with a walled garden in front and back, and a fenced paddock and stable across the road, where he kept a mild-mannered hacking horse: a big warmblood who carried him easily along the nearby trails, and over the fences at the jump-course maintained by the local riding school.

He’d lived in town only about a year, having moved in the previous fall. He was generally known to be comfortably fixed, with a nice income from freelance web design and a history of consultation for years before that. He kept himself to himself, but was a friendly enough chap. The local community recognized him—but didn’t really think of him as one of their own.

When he got to his car, the previously mentioned Archie stood with paws braced on the passenger-side window, and barked welcome—or warning. Mr. Spence was never quite sure with Archie. He was an independent thing, with peculiar ways and a stubborn conviction that Mr. Spence was up to no good. Mr. Spence was fine with that. It added a touch of comforting familiarity to a life that otherwise took some getting used to. People were so accepting—so easily lulled into a state of trust…

He drove out to his cottage, pulled into the drive, and scouted the area. The cottage was well-placed, with clear views on all sides: it would be difficult for anyone to approach without being noticed at least a half-mile from the little stone house up on the hill’s crest. Mr. Spence saw no sign of a car or motorbike; no stranger approaching from up or down the road; no horseman cutting across the heath. The wind rustled the dried stalks of hollyhock that Mr. Spence had not yet had the local yard service pull and burn in the autumn cleanup of the garden. A greenfinch clung to one tall stem and picked at the papery seed pod, knocking loose seed that would sprout the following spring.

Archie growled and paced and yapped restlessly.

“I agree, Archie,” Mr. Spence said. “Entirely too innocent.” He narrowed his eyes and considered his cottage. “Still,” he said, “it’s not as though I went out unprepared.” He unlocked the back door and went in, wiping his shoes on the mat as he crossed the threshold. He took a deep breath, and said, calmly, “Sherlock, it’s bad enough you tracked me down. Did you absolutely have to get into my Glenfiddich? And before noon. Really, brother-mine, your habits remain deplorable.”

“Glenfiddich’s too good for a dead man,” Sherlock drawled, coming to lean casually in the entry way from the sitting room beyond.

“Then you’ve no more right to it than I do,” Mr. Spence snapped. “Archie, do you have no taste?” He glowered as the Scottie trotted over to the tall stranger and grinned up at him, his short, upright tail wagging. “He reminds me of you, Sherlock. Ill-tempered, erratic, and given to low company.”

Sherlock squatted and rubbed the dog behind the ears with one hand, the other cradling a cut-glass tumbler of scotch. “Good boy,” he crooned, “Good boy. Keep my brother on his toes. He gets entirely too set in his ways if you don’t nip at his heels.”

“Hardly.”

“Mycroft, what are you doing here?”

“Morgan,” Mycroft corrected him. “Morgan Spence. I’m doing what I’ve done for years: freelance web design. A bit of consultation in related fields. I work from home.”

“New in the neighborhood?”

“I’ve done well lately. Finally had enough money to get that place in the country I always dreamed of.”

“Mmmm. Right.” Sherlock looked around. “Interesting spot. Not so far outside Manchester as to make you stand out—plenty of commuters and freelancers like you. Small enough to know when strangers come asking for you. And great sight lines—I was impressed by that.”

“Came by cab?”

“Actually, parked on a country lane a few miles back and came on foot. Gave me a better chance to assess your situation.”

“And?”

“It may do. Depending. Who are you running from?”

“Besides you?”

Sherlock smirked and cocked the glass of scotch in acknowledgement of the hit. “Score. Yes. Besides me.”

Mycroft sighed. “Too many people to name. And now you’ve found me I’d probably best be gone again. A shame. I quite liked it here.” His eyes darkened. “I’ll have to find someone to take Dominic and Archie, I suppose. Can’t exactly risk taking them with me when I go.” He looked at his brother. “I don’t suppose I can ask you to see to it?”

“Why leave?”

Mycroft sniffed. “Don’t be stupid, Sherlock. If you found me it’s only a matter of time before someone even less comforting does. And while I don’t mind wearing my stab-vest into town as a regular thing, it’s only so much use if someone makes a concerted effort to kill me.”

“So far as I know, anyone who wants you dead thinks you already are.”

“Except you.”

“Well, me… I’m somewhat of an exception.” Sherlock’s lips twitched in smug amusement. “Among other things, I’m happy enough to have you humiliated, not deceased.”

Mycroft sighed, and stripped out of his coat, hanging it on a brass hook on the back door, and topping it with his fedora. “I don’t find that as reassuring as you might think. You’re not as inclined to think things through as I’d prefer.”

“Seriously, Mike—"

“Morgan.”

“Very well,Morgan—I wouldn’t have known except you had me do a bit of your work for you years ago setting up your false identity. I had a lead to follow when I began to suspect.”

“I had to farm the work out to a number of you,” Mycroft said. “You. Anthea. Lestrade. Only the ones I trusted. But—well. Anthea. There will be people who have leads of their own, if they ever suspect—and you led them here.”

“No,” Sherlock smiled. “They think I’m in Bristol.”

“Oh, really?”

“The preponderance of the evidence suggests…”

“And if you’re wrong, statistical averages won’t resurrect me,” Mycroft huffed.

“Are you so sure they’ll hunt you?” Sherlock asked.

Mycroft slipped past him into the sitting room. He squatted on his heels and piled split wood on the fireplace, stirring up banked coals and waiting for the fire to flare. Then he rose and settled into a vast overstuffed arm chair covered in a country floral print—fat cabbage roses, the sort of furniture a man inherited from a maidenly former owner or deceased great-aunt. “They killed me once already,” he said, bleakly. “I’d really rather not give them a chance to do it again.”

“The accident was real?”

“The car bomb? Oh, yes. The only part that wasn’t real was the body I planted.” He glanced at Sherlock. “Your Miss Hooper is useful, by the way.”

Sherlock frowned, annoyed. “And a better liar than I thought.”

“You didn’t learn I was alive from her?”

“No.” He came in and sank into a similar armchair, this one upholstered in dreamy dust-blue hydrangeas. He scowled, embarrassed, and said, “I…googled some of your old identities. Names and covers I knew you’d used. I remembered setting up a business history for you, once, years ago and looked. I was surprised to see it was still active.”

Mycroft nodded. “I kept it current all these years. It took work to make sure there were no connections to me…except you.”

“It should be safe,” Sherlock said.

“It would have been—if you hadn’t made contact.”

“Again, how likely are they to want to kill you? So long as you’re willing to be dead…Mr. Spence.”

Mycroft shrugged. “No idea, really. I think the car bomb was one of Humphries’ black ops…but I still don’t know why I was targeted. Without knowing what made me too dangerous to live, I can’t say with any real certainty whether I’m dead enough now for their purposes.”

“Do you want me to—“

“No.” Mycroft closed his eyes. “I may be safe gambling and staying here. I’d prefer that. But I won’t be if you start stirring up dust. I’m dead, Sherlock. Leave it.” He looked over, eyes sad and tender. “This should be the last time you see me. Don’t bring the hounds to my door, Sherlock.”

Sherlock frowned and stared fiercely into the flames on the hearth. “Why are you giving up, Mike? You never give up.”

Mycroft sighed. “Because at some point you have to say, ‘Enough.’ I did good work—but the nation runs along without me. They killed me fair and square, Sherlock. Whatever their reasons, they accomplished their goals. I’m just grateful that I was able to extract a comfortable second life out of my own demise.”

“Do Mummy and Father know?”

“Only that I’m alive. They know they won’t see me again. They don’t know where I am—or who I am.”

“Lestrade?”

“After Anthea turned on me? I didn’t dare risk it—if he’s loyal, it would have put him at risk. If he sold out…”

“I take it I can’t tell John?”

Mycroft gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t be stupid, Sherlock.”

Sherlock pouted.

Mycroft ignored him.

Archie came in with a knotted sock in his jaws, and dropped it at Sherlock’s feet.

“He wants you to play tuggy with him.”

Sherlock picked up the lumpy mess and dangled it, letting the dog get it in a firm grip between strong back teeth. Soon the dog was gleefully struggling to pull away the improvised toy, growling in frantic mock fury. When the dog at last won, and flopped happily in front of the fire to lick and nibble his trophy, Sherlock asked, “Are you…happy?”

“Oddly, yes.” Mycroft considered. “We were always country boys in the end, weren’t we? The fields around Mummy and Father’s. The estate around the old family place. Sometimes I feel like London was a dream…a fever dream. I’m never sure looking back on it whether I was a Bond-style hero, or a Bond villain.”

“Villain,” Sherlock answered, promptly and without a sign of remorse. “You should have got a white Persian cat, not a black dog and a chestnut gelding.”

“I have a tiger moggie, too,” Mycroft said. “I try to keep him in, but he slipped out this morning and is probably out terrorizing the local songbirds.”

“Pets,” Sherlock said, suddenly soft and quiet. Tentatively he asked, “And…any other pets? Goldfish?”

Mycroft shrugged. “Not really. Unless you call a certain fondness for an entire town a matter of keeping pets. I am known—I suppose it’s a bit like keeping an entire aquarium. Exotic fish: baristas and bookies and librarians and shop keepers. They know me.” He grinned mischievously. “I can feed them by hand, if I move very slowly and don’t startle them too much.”

“Nothing more intimate?”

Mycroft smiled a distant Mona Lisa smile, but didn’t answer. His silence and the slight air of melancholy contentment seemed to satisfy Sherlock’s curiosity—if not his hopes for his brother’s second life.

“Give it time,” Mycroft said. “Maybe someday.”

“And how will I know, if I’m never to see you again?” Sherlock growled.

Mycroft didn’t answer.

Sherlock stood, then, and looked down from his height at his brother nestled into the soft, cushioned depths of his chair. “This is not how I want to conclude this, Mycroft.”

“Morgan.”

“Mycroft. Mike. Mikey. It’s not the right resolution.”

“And, yet—it is resolved. And I am…resolute.”

“Is it enough? Web design and a cottage and pets and a town you can peer into through plate glass?”

Mycroft blinked up at him. “But…Sherlock—it’s so much more than I’ve had in decades.”

Sherlock jerked as though he’d been bitten by something small and venomous. His eyes narrowed. “That was your choice.”

“It was…necessary. Now? Not so much. Indeed, the shift only provides more cover—no one would expect Mycroft Holmes to have a dog and a horse and a cat and a village. To know the local barista by name and slowly impoverish the town bookie through an understanding of racing odds.”

Sherlock raised a brow.

“Oh, very well,” Mycroft amended. “They might expect me to bankrupt the bookie. But the rest just adds to my cover.”

“Next you’ll be getting married to a nice widower and taking up gardening.”

Mycroft cocked his head, and said, softly, “It sounds rather lovely, now you mention it. I’ll consider it.”

“No, you won’t.”

Mycroft looked at him, eyes still and grey. “You think not?”

“I know not. You’re the British Government, Mycroft. You managed a planet. Someday you’ll get bored.”

“Perhaps,” Mycroft said. “But a man can have other hobbies, Sherlock. World Domination is only one of many.”

“You’ll come back.”

“I doubt it.”

Sherlock huffed. “I give you until Christmas-next.”

“Is it a bet?”

“How would you collect ifI lost?” Sherlock grumbled.

“We can arrange a drop,” Mycroft said. “I’ve regretted having no way to reach you in any case. I’ll tell you what—set one up, and drop me an anonymous note to give me the details. If I’m still here come Christmas next, you’ll owe me…what?”

“A return visit,” Sherlock said.

“And lead my enemies to me?”

“If they haven’t tracked you by Christmas-next, I hardly think they’ll still care.”

Mycroft considered arguing. He held secrets that would remain sensitive for decades to come—even for centuries. He had contacts that would make him a danger to some for all his life. But…

“Very well. I will concede the odds are they’ll be happy enough with my apparent death and lack of return,” he said, then rose and found the bottle of Glenfiddich. He poured himself a glass, then found Sherlock’s and refreshed it. He raised his. “To Christmas-next.”

“You’ll finally have a reason to love Christmas,” Sherlock said, teasing.

“What—a visit from you? Don’t be ridiculous,” Mycroft said, grinning. “It will merely serve to remind me of what I’ve escaped.” But his tone suggested otherwise. “If you come, bring some of that fruitcake from Fortnum and Mason. It’s lovely stuff. And a tinned plum pudding and hard sauce. I’m terrible with a pudding basin.”

“Only you,” Sherlock said. “Fruitcake and plum pudding.” He rolled his eyes—but clinked his glass against his brother’s. “Very well. I’ll bring dog biscuits for the mutt, too. I’ll leave it to you to sort out which is which.”

They drank quietly. Then Sherlock said, “Well. I’d best be off. If the car stays parked by the road too much longer people will wonder, and I’ll get back only to find the local bobbies had it towed.”

Mycroft nodded. “True enough.”

They went to the back door and stood, both uneasy. “Well,” Sherlock said.

“Yes. Well.”

Sherlock frowned—then fiercely, dangerously, he grabbed Mycroft and pulled him close. He said nothing…

Mycroft said nothing back, but held him tightly in return.

After a moment they pulled away.

“Well,” Sherlock said once more.

“Yes. Well,” Mycroft echoed, and opened the back door. A moment later Sherlock was gone.

Mycroft sighed and closed the door, and looked down at Archie, who’d come to stand at his feet.

“Don’t look so sad,” he growled at the dog. “He’s really a terrible prat.” But his voice was husky and his eyes damp, and he called the dog to him and went to sit on the floor in front of the fire, and he patted Archie for hours.


End file.
